I bet you already know all
health benefits for keeping slim. You have probably tried every diet; Atkins, Southbeach, metabolic, fruit, water or just plain starvation. In fact, you may even have gained extra weight. You know all intellectual stuff about keeping healthy, exercising and eating consistently. But you are still as heavy as ever.How is it that all those intellectual knowledge is not driving you towards weight loss?
This is because human body is driven by passion and not intellectual knowledge. Knowledge teaches us techniques; passion dives us to make it happen.
In this situation, external circumstances are not conducive in igniting our passion for keeping healthy and slim.
If we have failed numerous times in our weight loss efforts, it may be time that we evaluate our external environment. That may be cause of our failures.
Our family, partner and friends make up this external environment that we live in. It is not by malice that they want to sabotage our weight loss plans. It is rather their own innate fears that they wrestle with. They are like mother who nearly drowned. Hence, she will never allow her child to go swimming.
Ultimately, they are not passionate about encouraging you to lose weight because they attach certain meaning and value to your weight.
It is good intentions but ultimately bad expressions.
Family
Families can affect personal diet plans when everyone in family has a preference towards heavy weight.
Let us take for example that all your brothers and sisters (or fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts) are 200 pounds (100 kgs) and yet, seem to be having a whale of time in their life.
How motivated will you be to lose weight?
The Chinese Family
In Chinese family, food is good and our parents insist that we eat as much as possible; chubbiness is a mark of fortune and blessing. To add to this conundrum, it is superstitiously believe that every plate has to be cleared up. Otherwise, you will get an ugly wife/ husband in future.
This, to me, sounds like perfect setting to guilt-free weight gain.
The American Family
In a similar vein, most American family diets contain unhealthy fats and weight gain ingredients. You would feel obliged to eat a similar meal while at family functions to prevent being centre of attention
I am sure that there are many other cultures that have unhealthy eating rituals and superstitions. Think about your own growing up experience – what are values placed on food and consumption of food. How does it affect your weight loss efforts at this moment?
Partners
Then, there are those other people called partners!
Our partner spends most time with us, and their implicit, silent actions create a massive amount of pressure on us, regardless of actual words they say.
An overweight partner who does not want to lose weight will definitely not help you ignite passion that you need to lose weight. He/ she will have a comment for every exercise day and every healthy meal. Every action towards health may seem like a personal attack on him / her.
Friends
Lastly, we have our circle of friends. Friends can, of course, affect us in usual manner of over-eating and cajoling us to follow suit.
However, realm of friends has an added unique dimension. It is quite common to see overweight people group with slim friends.
Social dynamics dictate that friends of same characteristics (especially physical) tend to polarise towards each other. Hence, babes shop together and hunks hang out together.
Nonetheless, groups that comprise both fat and slim individuals usually come together because of a different similarity. They associate because of their low levels of self esteem. Such friends do not want you to face up to your inadequacies, because it would make you different from them. Your insecurity is in your fat body and they would help you to maintain it.
The Crux of Problem
Our concepts, meanings and values of health have been moulded through childhood years, then teenage years and then far into adulthood years. It is definitely not a new notion that popped out of yesterday. The lifestyle and size that we have today, is product of years of cultivation.
It is not right to blame our family, partners or friends; they are just living life way they know best.
Now that we know value of being healthy, we should see our family, partners and friends as main crux of our motivation to slim down.
We mould a better future for our lives so that we can be in position to help them reshape theirs!
What do we do now?
Everyday, we are faced with these emotional challenges that need to be sorted out. Only then, can we see past nearby obstacles and look further into promising future.
We have to reflect if we are truly satisfied with our lives. Is our extra weight affecting us now and will it affect us in future?
Do we believe that being fat will forever keep us in a perfect marriage?
Will we die before we see our children graduate?
Some obesity statistics to help us frame our mind: •Twice risk of raised blood pressure. •Increased risk of heart problems •A weight gain of 11 – 18 pounds (approx 8kgs) increases risk of Type 2 diabetes by 100%. •Obesity during pregnancy increases risk of maternal high blood pressure by 1000%! •Middle aged fat people have same reduced life expectancy as smokers.
